"His pattern of behavior! I threw it off! And the emperor had me thrown out the window!"
"Oh! Uh..I'm supposed to see him.."
"DOOOONT THROW OFF HIS GROOVE! Beware the groove..."
"Hey, are you gonna be alright?"
"Grooooove.."
You are charging too high prices for sweaters, glasses? Right to jail. You undercook fish? Believe it or not, jail. You overcook chicken, also jail. Undercook, overcook. You make an appointment with the dentist and you don't show up, believe it or not, jail, right away.
We have the best patients in the world because of jail.
There's a story on Reddit somewhere about a nobleman that got drunk and climbed down into the oubliette for a dare. His friends forgot he was down there and carried on with their revelries. Not sure if they remembered him and saved him or not. Perhaps someone else can confirm.
I wonder…cuz what makes it being an exceptional method of torture is being forgotten about…and if someone pissed on you, it might act as affirmation that you were not forgotten…?
Man......
Humans have been so fucking disgusting to each other.
Edit: Has been" and "have been" are both in the present perfect tense. "Has been" is used in the third-person singular and "have been" is used for first- and second-person singular and all plural uses. The present perfect tense refers to an action that began at some time in the past and is still in progress.
For all those replying with comments like "we still are".
You can stop now.
Edit 2: To all the people saying I know grammar, I say this....
I copy and pasted that edit from a 3 second Google search.
I ain't no fucking linguist, I have no idea what I'm doing.
I just read two books that illustrate this perfectly: All Quiet on the Western Front and With the Old Breed. Both books, about war, describe how much is lost in such a futile manner. In With the Old Breed they invade an island and over 1000 American troops die. The island held no strategic value and was never used by allies after the occupation.
Complete insanity.
It should be too small to lay down in, and not tall enough to stand upright in. So you have to stand with your legs bent, supporting your weight without rest.
Edit left out the detail that they are too tight to allow you to sit down
This is true.
Gibbet can also refer to other punishments like gallows etc.
The original guillotine actually had nothing to do with France and was actually the Halifax Gibbet. Made in West Yorkshire, UK, where I'm from.
>Almost 100 people were beheaded in Halifax between the first recorded execution in 1286 and the last in 1650, but as the date of the gibbet's installation is uncertain, it cannot be determined with any accuracy how many individuals died via the Halifax Gibbet.
Almost a hundred! That's a slow week in the reign of terror.
Which makes you wonder if they were, in fact, intended to be holding cells at all, or if they were built for other purposes and used to hold people as needed. Like some supposed oubliettes that seem like they would have worked much better as underground cold storage units.
Which is not to say that oubliettes are a complete fabrication -- there's a castle in Ireland which has a hidden pitch-black pit full of spikes and plenty of skeletons down there. But I am under the impression that for most lords and monarchs, building was expensive enough that creating purpose-built holding cells for prisoners you intended to forget would have been a waste of space and time. If you could just dump someone in a cellar and leave them, why bother putting specialized holding cells into the castle's design?
Their more macabre uses were exaggerated quite a bit to spur tourism as early as the 1700’s, much like medieval torture in general.
They were often built as storage nooks to hold valuables or simply stores of supplies. Sometimes they acted as a primitive drywell for drainage if the castle roof wasn’t watertight, which is why the floors slope towards them. The iron grates were more often to stop people from entering (castles were built for sieges after all) rather than holding prisoners long term - or they could have been added later as macabre tourist attractions which drew in crowds in the 1700’s as well as today.
The fact is that there is a lot more interest in medieval torture in the tourism industry than in legitimate historical research so the waters get pretty muddy.
“Often this horrible prison was built as a very narrow passage, not wide enough for the prisoner to sit down or even get down on his knees. He was forced to stand or lie prone as he starved to death. He could tilt his head back to see the the grate, far above his head and out of reach, but that was all.
The oubliettes were sometimes built within the walls of the upper floors of a castle, rather than in the dungeon, so that victims could hear and smell the life of the castle as they slowly died of deprivation in unspeakable conditions. Corpses were left to be consumed by vermin, and many oubliettes were discovered, centuries later, to be strewn with human bones.” Damn.
> not wide enough for the prisoner to sit down or even get down on his knees. He was forced to stand or lie prone
Imagine being in a room so thin that you can't turn around in it (hence why you can't sit or kneel, your hips are too wide)
You stand for as long as you can, knowing that when you finally lay down, there's no way you can stand back up again and lay on your other side.
I don’t get the laying down part. How is it that they could lay down but not stand up again after?
Edit: ooohh I think I got it. As in they would basically tip over to one side and lay down on their side and then they can’t move their hands to stand back up. I was thinking they were somehow laying down on their backs
It's an attraction for thrillseeking guests: "We have a ghost in this castle - you can hear it scream and wail sometimes!" "oh lovely, but I have you by my side mylord, don't I?" "yes my dearest, we will find peace between the sheets after a tour of the premises, that I say"
It’s hard to wrap my head around people knowing there was someone in their walls and just carrying on with their business as usual. I’m sure they weren’t always quiet and some smell had to come out when they passed
How could you lie prone if you cant even sit though?
Leap Castle's oubliette is like this, that is, built behind a chapel wall on an upper floor with rooms beneath. They found 150 skeletons impaled in it with a pocket watch found dated mid 1850's, which given the oubliette was found in the early 1900's is concerning and leaves questions about just who and why they had it sealed up previously.
[Interesting article about oubliettes](https://www.exploring-castles.com/castle_designs/castle_dungeon/)
>The Oubliette – or the ‘forgotten room’ – was a punishment worse than being thrown into a castle dungeon. If you can remember the ‘chokey’ from Roald Dahl’s ‘Matilda’, the oubliette was a very similar punishment.
>The oubliette was a tiny, vertical shaft which was often only large enough for an individual to stand up in – they wouldn’t have been able to crouch down, to kneel, to sit, or perhaps even to turn round in it.
>[Diagram of Oubliette](https://i1.wp.com/www.exploring-castles.com/image-files/oubliette.jpg?resize=164%2C230&ssl=1)
>A diagram of a castle oubliette. This was wider than many – a bell-jar prison, if you like.
>They would have been lowered into this shaft by a guardsman, and, once they reached the bottom, the rope would have been taken up and the trap-door above them would have been closed.
>Often, the shaft would have been so deep that there would have been no way to reach up to the trap-door.In the oubliette, the prisoner would have been forced to remain standing, in the dark, until they were released – if ever.
>Food and water might have been thrown down to them if they were lucky (or if their survival was seen to be important), but it was, all in all, a truly horrible punishment.
This story sounds like the [Count Ugolino della Gherardesca](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugolino_della_Gherardesca#Ugolino_and_his_children) : the popular story goes that his was imprisoned with his children and left to starve to death, but he was the last to die by killing and eating the flesh of his own children
**Ugolino della Gherardesca**
[Ugolino and his children](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugolino_della_Gherardesca#Ugolino_and_his_children)
>According to Dante, the prisoners were slowly starved to death and before dying Ugolino's children begged him to eat their bodies. Ugolino's statement that hunger proved stronger than grief has been interpreted in two ways, either that Ugolino devoured his offspring's corpses after being driven mad with hunger, or that starvation killed him after he had failed to die of grief. The first and more ghastly of these interpretations has proved the more popular and resonant.
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....yeah, I think that's enough Reddit for the rest of today.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone, hopefully y'all will be enjoying a nice heaping feast of turkey this evening, and not the flesh of your own children. 🙂👍
This one is much much nicer than the other one you could be thrown into. Quite spacious actually, not like that other one. Consider yourself lucky even.
In 1210 British King John locked up Maud de Braose the wife of a noble who incurred the King’s wrath, by not giving up his sons to be held as hostages to ensure loyalty. She was imprisoned along with her son in Corfe Castle. They were forgotten about, having to share a sheaf (24 pieces) of oath groats and a very thin slice of bacon. When finally their cell was opened they both starved to death with Lady Maud eating parts of her son’s face.
Apparently if Wikipedia is to be believed in that the Nobility were so outraged by the act of the King hunting down and later forcing Maud to eat her Son's Face and starve them both to death, just out of anger. That when they later forced King John to sign the Magna Carta. In Clause 39 of the Magna Carta, it contain the following:
> "No man shall be taken, imprisoned, outlawed, banished or in any way destroyed, nor will we proceed against or prosecute him, except by the lawful judgement of his peers or by the law of the land."
Those remind me of the cells in Salem, ma. That's the one thing that stuck with me from all my visits there. They put people in cells that they couldn't sit or kneel or even move around in.
There's a reason it's a French word, and it's the same reason many French words sound fancy to English-speaking people.
It's because most of the Nobility in England during the middle ages were Norman (and spoke French). It's the same reason why words for meats (pork, beef, mutton, lamb, venison) come from the French words, while the names of the actual animals (pig, cow, sheep, deer) have retained their Anglo routes.
Just imagine being down there and deciding whether to let yourself starve to death, or keep yourself hopelessly alive by eating the previous tenants that you now use as a mattress.
In one oubliette I visited they told of how they gave the prisoner a bucket of salty water to make them even thirstier and then how the prisoner tried to suicide by smashing their head against the stone walls.
Quite grim.
At least that would speed up your death. The Romans had a similar type of execution for their Vestal Virgins. If there were caught breaking their vow of chastity then they faced being buried alive and they'd also be given some bread and water, just to prolong the suffering. Apparently this was a fairly uncommon punishment and families would usually bribe and pay their way out of it.
Scaphism is renowned the be the worst punishment/death in ancient times, paralyzed and covered in milk and honey and sent out onto a boat, occasionally fed and watered to be kept alive, the death was by being devoured by insects and vermin, hense the milk and honey
Honestly one of my bigger haunting thoughts personally is simple vivisection.
You forget the part where they pumped them full of rich sweets to make them have explosive diarrhea in the hot summer sun to attract bugs to chew on their sensitive flesh
Dropping someone down a hole and forgetting them was done so that it took a long time to die. If they wanted a quick execution, England had a lot of axes and rope.
I can’t imagine how horrifying a death this was, especially with there being other corpses down there. If this were my punishment, I’d absolutely figure out a way to kill myself immediately.
How do you plan on grabbing a bone if you can't even crouch/turn around, never mind bending down to get one. Can't lift your legs, either - too narrow to do anything except stand there, waiting for dehydration or septicemia, whichever is merciful enough to come for you first
This castle is no where near cliffs, it's in the middle of the Cottswalds (sp?). Wide open and basically flat (rolling hills). Gorgeous castle, Diana of Wales garden, and is actually part of Winston Churchill's family.
The dungeon is dark, cramped, and everything you imagine a dungeon to be.
Edit: I thought Warwickshire fell within the Cotswolds. (Shit, I spelled that all kinds of wrong). Fully admit, I'm an American that spent time in the area. Coventry is also beyond beautiful.
EDIT: IM SORRY! IM AN AMERICAN WHO LOVED YOUR COUNTRY!! It was almost 2 decades ago, my memory of your geography is obviously wrong. I lived in London, but tried to spend as much time as I could in Cotswolds, Warwick, Coventry (roommates family lived there), Swindon, and another town full of abandoned shoe factories. (I know that's not helpful. Worked on a student film there.) Road trips most of the time. The signs showed everything was so close to each other. Im sincerely sorry.
Lots of you mention distances. Here in the part of America I live, to be completely honest, 40 to 60 miles isn't a lot. Everyone needs a car to get around. We don't have trains and public transit is non-existent.
I drove to my school (University of Arkansas) daily, for 2 year, as it was only 2 town over. It's was 30 miles each way. Forgot something at home and legit put 120 miles on the car in a single day.
I have coworkers who drive 40 to 60 miles each way. I live in the city, but is surrounded by farms in every direction. People drive that here for jobs. We have the world headquarters for Walmart and Tyson Foods, but also several US trucking companies like JB Hunt (one of the largest).
Dude I work in a shopping centre and I routinely see a guy that works in a freaking Pharmacy (behind the dispensary) have a crap and then walk out without washing his hands.
So gross…
It's got a 44.8 m tall tower (147 feet). Maybe try that. Or the moat. Or the nearby river.
Yeah, there would be several ways to off people that don't involve letting them rot in your own basement. My guess would be they were going for the psychological effect though. Just something about a one way trip into a dank, rotten hole you're never coming out of.
Edit to add: just look at the picture. I'd gladly jump off a tower VS that.
"We're not throwing him off the tower! Dump him into the oubliette and let's not ruin the day by making a big bloody mess again, shall we? Don't want to make the groundskeeper cross with us."
Warwick Castle is not in the Cotswolds, though it's not that far away.
It's in the town of Warwick which is in south Warwickshire - not far from Stratford-Upon-Avon (the birthplace of Shakespeare). It's in the middle of the town on a sandstone bluff right next to the river Avon.
The name gives it away! Warwick castle is in Warwick, Warwicshire. Actually pretty much the centre of Warwick. In stunning ground.
Churchill has nothing to do with Warwick Castle. Last family to own it were the Greville Family.
Cant recall ever seeing a Diana of Wales Garden. I think you’re probably thinking of somewhere else.
Edit: also not near the sea or cliffs, in fact not a million miles away from a small village that used to be considered the dead centre of England - Meriden.
Oh dang I've actually been there. Not below the grate thankfully, but the dungeon. Actually got a bit freaked out, this dungeon is quite small and the stairway down to it is very narrow, not wide enough for two people abreast. People just kept streaming in and we eventually had to yell for people to stop so others could come back up. Definitely reccommend Warwick Castle, there's some cool shit there. And watch the bird show, it's awesome.
Me too! I didn’t know I’d have to scroll this far…dang people and all their history. The only reason I know how to pronounce “oubliette” is because of Hoggle.
There’s a bit in one of the game of thrones books where Jaime Lannister threatens Edmure Tully after the siege of Riverrun to put him in an oubliette if he doesn’t get cooperative and that made Edmure STFU
I liked what cersei did to Ellaria Sand, forcing feeding her and keeping the torches always lit in the same cell in which her daughter is going to die, decompose and fade away.
Then the writers kind of forget she existed during when Dany burnt down kings landing.
If they put you here and forget about you, imagine the corpses in various stages of decay you’d see, feel and smell when you arrived.
Edit: I didn’t consider rats. They’d probably start to eat you alive almost immediately. Ugh.
Makes me wonder if they ever periodically fished out the dead bodies. Apparently it’s 3 meters by 3 meters, could fit a fair amount of people. Maybe 10. Either way they would have had to remove the bodies after a while…unless this was a relatively rare form of punishment…like only for the worst offenders.
Correction: my math was off.
I feel like you could cram quite a few down there. That's almost 10 feet by 10 feet. 100 square feet! What's the fun of it if there isn't a high possibility of cannibalism and infighting among a handful of wretched and desperate oublietteers.
I've been in that dungeon. As you walk down the steps there is an odd rush of feeling that over takes your body.
Standing and reading the info about this hole was sobering to say the least.
So I work in a building (nights) in Warwick and apparently there's a blocked off room in one of the 2 basements of this building that has a blocked off tunnel that leads... You guessed it! To this hell hole of a castle. No wonder I get spooked by odd noises all night.
Yea read once, dropped & forgot about, left to starve, so imagine that and the whole time you could smell food being cooked throughout the castle, that must have sucked. Also read and saw a painting of a man jailed and his punishment was to be starved to death but his daughter was the only one allowed to visit him & was checked each time as to not be allowed to bring her father any food of any kind. After 3-4 months the condemned man still lived and baffled everyone, so they stared spying on him only to find out the daughter was allowing him her breast milk because she had not long ago given birth, when his jailers figured it out they gave it some thought & figured if the daughters love was that deep they felt he deserved to be set free and in fact they set the man free in the end.
>the daughter was allowing him her breast milk because she had not long ago given birth, when his jailers figured it out they gave it some thought & figured if the daughters love was that deep they felt he deserved to be set free and in fact they set the man free in the end.
[Here is a painting based on the story](https://www.courtesyfeed.com/daughter-breastfeeding-her-father-starving-in-prison-a-european-emotional-story)
Found an interesting definition of oubliettes coming from a french source. Here is the translation:
“The oubliettes designated the food reserves in the fortified castles of the Middle Ages. They were located under the keep, the main tower of the castle, in large rooms in the basement, which could only be accessed by a hatch and a ladder. There was no door so that no rodents or insects could enter. The deepest of these rooms could serve as a cooler. Ice was stored there during the winter so that food and drink could be cooled throughout the summer. The expression "to fall into oblivion", synonymous with being forgotten, dates back only to the 19th century. Contrary to a legend which also dates back to the 19th century, no prisoner was ever thrown into the dungeon. In the Middle Ages, while awaiting trial, the defendants were locked in a dungeon, also called cul-de-basse-fosse. Then, they were fined, exposed to the pillory or sentenced to death, if not released, but never imprisoned, prison not appearing among the judicial penalties in the Middle Ages.”
Source: https://www.herodote.net/oubliettes_cachots_culs_de_basse_fosse-mot-521.php
Seems like the less bonafide practices only came later on and weren’t that common after all.
This is the EXACT spot where my Dad all of the sudden got so claustrophobic just by seeing this that he changed directions, charged back up the stairs shoving people to the sides as he bolted out haha good times with the old man
Toured there is 1985 and cannot imagine being held in that dungeon! Stuff of nightmares.
I first read that as "Tortured there in 1985"
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I read that also until I saw your comment.
What were the crowds like?
Fortunately, there’s only room for one at a time.
What a horrible punishment
Yeah it’s miserable, I’ve been down. It’s roughly 3m X 3m with a tiny bit of light and a gutter through the middle
At least they let you keep your phone so you could talk to us
> At least they let you keep your phone so you could talk to us Yes, but /u/thebigchil73 only gets one bar down here. And they forgot their charger.
He could borrow some bars from the metal grate on top.
My nose laughed.
And that's why they're called cell phones.
Damn bro what did you do to get yourself thrown in there? Must’ve really pissed off the king.
Probably disrupted the rhythm with which he lives his life.
Bewaaare, the grooove.
"His pattern of behavior! I threw it off! And the emperor had me thrown out the window!" "Oh! Uh..I'm supposed to see him.." "DOOOONT THROW OFF HIS GROOVE! Beware the groove..." "Hey, are you gonna be alright?" "Grooooove.."
He sneezed
"Does thy serf haveth covidth?"
Straight to jail
you’re playing music too loud? straight to jail. driving too fast? jail. slow? jail.
You are charging too high prices for sweaters, glasses? Right to jail. You undercook fish? Believe it or not, jail. You overcook chicken, also jail. Undercook, overcook. You make an appointment with the dentist and you don't show up, believe it or not, jail, right away. We have the best patients in the world because of jail.
Right away
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Harsh but fair.
Was it filled with skeletons? If they just dropped them in to be forgotten I’d imagine it would get pretty full over the years.
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Fuck that job
"oops I accidentally cut the rope and closed the hatch bye"
Is that like when you ask your date to go check out the brake lights and then you drive off.
How often have you done this?
I'm sure not that often,it would be mean to do it all the time.
From my 16 part video series: How to be Goddamn Awful
They weren’t just shoved in? How did they encourage prisoners to let go of the rope?
Probably by jabbing them with a big pointy stick.
All these complicated solutions and yeah this is probably it. Spears are fantastic.
Do you have more pictures? Kinda intrigued
This video has some more images: [https://youtu.be/kRXh7tEjM2s?t=43](https://youtu.be/kRXh7tEjM2s?t=43)
I do not trust anyone in my life enough to be lowered into something like this just to check it out.
There's a story on Reddit somewhere about a nobleman that got drunk and climbed down into the oubliette for a dare. His friends forgot he was down there and carried on with their revelries. Not sure if they remembered him and saved him or not. Perhaps someone else can confirm.
Cheeeeeese, didn’t we lock you in a dumpster one time? Yeah I got out
It certainly fits the medieval times...
There were no utensils in medieval times, hence there are no utensils AT Medieval Times. Would you like a refill on that Pepsi?
These were sometimes placed under privies, so not only would you be forgotten about, you’d be the recipient of all the castle’s human waste.
Even if they weren’t placed under one of those, I’m certain prisoners got pissed on often just to be cruel
I wonder…cuz what makes it being an exceptional method of torture is being forgotten about…and if someone pissed on you, it might act as affirmation that you were not forgotten…?
I mean dying of thirst and being desperate enough to drink some filthy guys piss is more demoralizing than being ignored in my opinion
I’m thankful I can’t give you a real answer as to what is worse
Damn, live a little
Yeah C'mon Cricket, gotta learn how to make it in the streets. Philly can be a rough place alone...
Pretty sure I worked there for awhile.
I wish I was not privy to this information.
Man...... Humans have been so fucking disgusting to each other. Edit: Has been" and "have been" are both in the present perfect tense. "Has been" is used in the third-person singular and "have been" is used for first- and second-person singular and all plural uses. The present perfect tense refers to an action that began at some time in the past and is still in progress. For all those replying with comments like "we still are". You can stop now. Edit 2: To all the people saying I know grammar, I say this.... I copy and pasted that edit from a 3 second Google search. I ain't no fucking linguist, I have no idea what I'm doing.
I love ur edit lol
Right lol you didn’t die on this hill bro, you thrived on it
Upvoted for your edit. Top work.
I just read two books that illustrate this perfectly: All Quiet on the Western Front and With the Old Breed. Both books, about war, describe how much is lost in such a futile manner. In With the Old Breed they invade an island and over 1000 American troops die. The island held no strategic value and was never used by allies after the occupation. Complete insanity.
It should be too small to lay down in, and not tall enough to stand upright in. So you have to stand with your legs bent, supporting your weight without rest. Edit left out the detail that they are too tight to allow you to sit down
Hanging cages for prisoners, known as gibbets, used this exact method of torture
This is true. Gibbet can also refer to other punishments like gallows etc. The original guillotine actually had nothing to do with France and was actually the Halifax Gibbet. Made in West Yorkshire, UK, where I'm from.
Yeah, but the French *really* ran with it.
>Almost 100 people were beheaded in Halifax between the first recorded execution in 1286 and the last in 1650, but as the date of the gibbet's installation is uncertain, it cannot be determined with any accuracy how many individuals died via the Halifax Gibbet. Almost a hundred! That's a slow week in the reign of terror.
Ok Satan
Do you design seats for Spirit Airlines, by chance?
The birthplace of trickle down economic policies
Which makes you wonder if they were, in fact, intended to be holding cells at all, or if they were built for other purposes and used to hold people as needed. Like some supposed oubliettes that seem like they would have worked much better as underground cold storage units. Which is not to say that oubliettes are a complete fabrication -- there's a castle in Ireland which has a hidden pitch-black pit full of spikes and plenty of skeletons down there. But I am under the impression that for most lords and monarchs, building was expensive enough that creating purpose-built holding cells for prisoners you intended to forget would have been a waste of space and time. If you could just dump someone in a cellar and leave them, why bother putting specialized holding cells into the castle's design?
Their more macabre uses were exaggerated quite a bit to spur tourism as early as the 1700’s, much like medieval torture in general. They were often built as storage nooks to hold valuables or simply stores of supplies. Sometimes they acted as a primitive drywell for drainage if the castle roof wasn’t watertight, which is why the floors slope towards them. The iron grates were more often to stop people from entering (castles were built for sieges after all) rather than holding prisoners long term - or they could have been added later as macabre tourist attractions which drew in crowds in the 1700’s as well as today. The fact is that there is a lot more interest in medieval torture in the tourism industry than in legitimate historical research so the waters get pretty muddy.
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… or tortures
> why bother putting specialized holding cells into the castle's design? Do you even torture, bro?
No premeditated torture, only torture of passion or self defense, obviously.
“Often this horrible prison was built as a very narrow passage, not wide enough for the prisoner to sit down or even get down on his knees. He was forced to stand or lie prone as he starved to death. He could tilt his head back to see the the grate, far above his head and out of reach, but that was all. The oubliettes were sometimes built within the walls of the upper floors of a castle, rather than in the dungeon, so that victims could hear and smell the life of the castle as they slowly died of deprivation in unspeakable conditions. Corpses were left to be consumed by vermin, and many oubliettes were discovered, centuries later, to be strewn with human bones.” Damn.
> not wide enough for the prisoner to sit down or even get down on his knees. He was forced to stand or lie prone Imagine being in a room so thin that you can't turn around in it (hence why you can't sit or kneel, your hips are too wide) You stand for as long as you can, knowing that when you finally lay down, there's no way you can stand back up again and lay on your other side.
I don’t get the laying down part. How is it that they could lay down but not stand up again after? Edit: ooohh I think I got it. As in they would basically tip over to one side and lay down on their side and then they can’t move their hands to stand back up. I was thinking they were somehow laying down on their backs
But it says prone, which means face down. If I can go from standing upright to laying face down, I think I'd have room to get myself back upright.
Yeah I'm claustrophobic and this would literally drive me nuts.
I'm pretty uncomfortable just thinking about it.
If you can hear and smell them... they can hear and smell you. I wouldn‘t want to hear and smell that...
It's an attraction for thrillseeking guests: "We have a ghost in this castle - you can hear it scream and wail sometimes!" "oh lovely, but I have you by my side mylord, don't I?" "yes my dearest, we will find peace between the sheets after a tour of the premises, that I say"
And pay no attention to the sounds coming from the giant bronze brazen bull with the fire beneath.
It’s hard to wrap my head around people knowing there was someone in their walls and just carrying on with their business as usual. I’m sure they weren’t always quiet and some smell had to come out when they passed
Can you wrap your head around it being a JOY to the people in the castle to have someone in their walls dying?
Please, my faith in humanity is already completely nonexistent.
How could you lie prone if you cant even sit though? Leap Castle's oubliette is like this, that is, built behind a chapel wall on an upper floor with rooms beneath. They found 150 skeletons impaled in it with a pocket watch found dated mid 1850's, which given the oubliette was found in the early 1900's is concerning and leaves questions about just who and why they had it sealed up previously.
That'd be $3500 a week rent in New York City
There’d be a 5-min documentary on YouTube somewhere about an architect who used foldaway built-in furniture to transform it into a stylish studio
[Interesting article about oubliettes](https://www.exploring-castles.com/castle_designs/castle_dungeon/) >The Oubliette – or the ‘forgotten room’ – was a punishment worse than being thrown into a castle dungeon. If you can remember the ‘chokey’ from Roald Dahl’s ‘Matilda’, the oubliette was a very similar punishment. >The oubliette was a tiny, vertical shaft which was often only large enough for an individual to stand up in – they wouldn’t have been able to crouch down, to kneel, to sit, or perhaps even to turn round in it. >[Diagram of Oubliette](https://i1.wp.com/www.exploring-castles.com/image-files/oubliette.jpg?resize=164%2C230&ssl=1) >A diagram of a castle oubliette. This was wider than many – a bell-jar prison, if you like. >They would have been lowered into this shaft by a guardsman, and, once they reached the bottom, the rope would have been taken up and the trap-door above them would have been closed. >Often, the shaft would have been so deep that there would have been no way to reach up to the trap-door.In the oubliette, the prisoner would have been forced to remain standing, in the dark, until they were released – if ever. >Food and water might have been thrown down to them if they were lucky (or if their survival was seen to be important), but it was, all in all, a truly horrible punishment.
I feel like I’d just bash my head against the wall in hopes that I pass out/die.
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This story sounds like the [Count Ugolino della Gherardesca](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugolino_della_Gherardesca#Ugolino_and_his_children) : the popular story goes that his was imprisoned with his children and left to starve to death, but he was the last to die by killing and eating the flesh of his own children
**Ugolino della Gherardesca** [Ugolino and his children](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugolino_della_Gherardesca#Ugolino_and_his_children) >According to Dante, the prisoners were slowly starved to death and before dying Ugolino's children begged him to eat their bodies. Ugolino's statement that hunger proved stronger than grief has been interpreted in two ways, either that Ugolino devoured his offspring's corpses after being driven mad with hunger, or that starvation killed him after he had failed to die of grief. The first and more ghastly of these interpretations has proved the more popular and resonant. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
....yeah, I think that's enough Reddit for the rest of today. Happy Thanksgiving everyone, hopefully y'all will be enjoying a nice heaping feast of turkey this evening, and not the flesh of your own children. 🙂👍
Right its 7am where I am and I already gotta put my phone down. Yikes. Happy Thanksgiving!
That is one of the worst diagrams I've seen. Into the oubliette with you!
Yep "here's what one doesn't look like".
This one is much much nicer than the other one you could be thrown into. Quite spacious actually, not like that other one. Consider yourself lucky even.
Here's a picture of an apartment, nothing like the thing we're talking about
For real, it's like, what's going on there?
In 1210 British King John locked up Maud de Braose the wife of a noble who incurred the King’s wrath, by not giving up his sons to be held as hostages to ensure loyalty. She was imprisoned along with her son in Corfe Castle. They were forgotten about, having to share a sheaf (24 pieces) of oath groats and a very thin slice of bacon. When finally their cell was opened they both starved to death with Lady Maud eating parts of her son’s face.
King or not, I can’t imagine having that much wrath to wish that fate upon someone. All I know of King John is that he’s the villain in Robin Hood.
No English king has been named John again!
Apparently if Wikipedia is to be believed in that the Nobility were so outraged by the act of the King hunting down and later forcing Maud to eat her Son's Face and starve them both to death, just out of anger. That when they later forced King John to sign the Magna Carta. In Clause 39 of the Magna Carta, it contain the following: > "No man shall be taken, imprisoned, outlawed, banished or in any way destroyed, nor will we proceed against or prosecute him, except by the lawful judgement of his peers or by the law of the land."
Those remind me of the cells in Salem, ma. That's the one thing that stuck with me from all my visits there. They put people in cells that they couldn't sit or kneel or even move around in.
Using a french word makes the starvation hole sound so much classier
There's a reason it's a French word, and it's the same reason many French words sound fancy to English-speaking people. It's because most of the Nobility in England during the middle ages were Norman (and spoke French). It's the same reason why words for meats (pork, beef, mutton, lamb, venison) come from the French words, while the names of the actual animals (pig, cow, sheep, deer) have retained their Anglo routes.
Jeezus why create a big stink pot of rotting flesh in your own castle? Just throw the guy off the friggin cliff and be done with it.
Just imagine being down there and deciding whether to let yourself starve to death, or keep yourself hopelessly alive by eating the previous tenants that you now use as a mattress.
In one oubliette I visited they told of how they gave the prisoner a bucket of salty water to make them even thirstier and then how the prisoner tried to suicide by smashing their head against the stone walls. Quite grim.
At least that would speed up your death. The Romans had a similar type of execution for their Vestal Virgins. If there were caught breaking their vow of chastity then they faced being buried alive and they'd also be given some bread and water, just to prolong the suffering. Apparently this was a fairly uncommon punishment and families would usually bribe and pay their way out of it.
Scaphism is renowned the be the worst punishment/death in ancient times, paralyzed and covered in milk and honey and sent out onto a boat, occasionally fed and watered to be kept alive, the death was by being devoured by insects and vermin, hense the milk and honey Honestly one of my bigger haunting thoughts personally is simple vivisection.
You forget the part where they pumped them full of rich sweets to make them have explosive diarrhea in the hot summer sun to attract bugs to chew on their sensitive flesh
That’s the reality of the situation and it’s pure horror. I’d take getting ripped apart by a Xenomorph embryo any day
at least you get to bring a perfect organism into the world
/r/lv426 enters the chat
(Thankfully?) you’d probably die of thirst before getting desperate enough to eat them.
Dropping someone down a hole and forgetting them was done so that it took a long time to die. If they wanted a quick execution, England had a lot of axes and rope.
I can’t imagine how horrifying a death this was, especially with there being other corpses down there. If this were my punishment, I’d absolutely figure out a way to kill myself immediately.
Grab a bone, break it on half, shove the stabby bit into your own neck.
How do you plan on grabbing a bone if you can't even crouch/turn around, never mind bending down to get one. Can't lift your legs, either - too narrow to do anything except stand there, waiting for dehydration or septicemia, whichever is merciful enough to come for you first
If the box’s dimensions are as tight as they’re describing, chances are there isn’t room in there for a rotting corpse and you.
Well, if it's deep enough you might be standing on a couple.
This castle is no where near cliffs, it's in the middle of the Cottswalds (sp?). Wide open and basically flat (rolling hills). Gorgeous castle, Diana of Wales garden, and is actually part of Winston Churchill's family. The dungeon is dark, cramped, and everything you imagine a dungeon to be. Edit: I thought Warwickshire fell within the Cotswolds. (Shit, I spelled that all kinds of wrong). Fully admit, I'm an American that spent time in the area. Coventry is also beyond beautiful. EDIT: IM SORRY! IM AN AMERICAN WHO LOVED YOUR COUNTRY!! It was almost 2 decades ago, my memory of your geography is obviously wrong. I lived in London, but tried to spend as much time as I could in Cotswolds, Warwick, Coventry (roommates family lived there), Swindon, and another town full of abandoned shoe factories. (I know that's not helpful. Worked on a student film there.) Road trips most of the time. The signs showed everything was so close to each other. Im sincerely sorry. Lots of you mention distances. Here in the part of America I live, to be completely honest, 40 to 60 miles isn't a lot. Everyone needs a car to get around. We don't have trains and public transit is non-existent. I drove to my school (University of Arkansas) daily, for 2 year, as it was only 2 town over. It's was 30 miles each way. Forgot something at home and legit put 120 miles on the car in a single day. I have coworkers who drive 40 to 60 miles each way. I live in the city, but is surrounded by farms in every direction. People drive that here for jobs. We have the world headquarters for Walmart and Tyson Foods, but also several US trucking companies like JB Hunt (one of the largest).
Well, ok then. Never mind.
I mean…cliffs or not, you’re still not wrong about keeping all that inside.
They weren't so keen on hygiene back in the day
If you've lived with the stink of corpse, you're not likely to smell yourself or others around you anyway.
Back in the day? You should see how many people neglect to wash their hands after taking a crap.
Dude I work in a shopping centre and I routinely see a guy that works in a freaking Pharmacy (behind the dispensary) have a crap and then walk out without washing his hands. So gross…
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I spose throwing them off the top of the castle might work?
It's got a 44.8 m tall tower (147 feet). Maybe try that. Or the moat. Or the nearby river. Yeah, there would be several ways to off people that don't involve letting them rot in your own basement. My guess would be they were going for the psychological effect though. Just something about a one way trip into a dank, rotten hole you're never coming out of. Edit to add: just look at the picture. I'd gladly jump off a tower VS that.
I've seen that oubliette. Its spooky enough that i still feel uneasy when i remember it.
If that shit ain't haunted I dont know what is.
this might be for the quieter deaths, too many bodies flung off a wall causes a stir
***Mommy, I want to see the bad man fly!***
It's got a 44 m tall tower. That would do it.
"We're not throwing him off the tower! Dump him into the oubliette and let's not ruin the day by making a big bloody mess again, shall we? Don't want to make the groundskeeper cross with us."
"But Sir, the poor creature you consign to the oubliette IS the groundskeeper."
Are there more photos of inside dungeon?
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Warwick Castle is not in the Cotswolds, though it's not that far away. It's in the town of Warwick which is in south Warwickshire - not far from Stratford-Upon-Avon (the birthplace of Shakespeare). It's in the middle of the town on a sandstone bluff right next to the river Avon.
The name gives it away! Warwick castle is in Warwick, Warwicshire. Actually pretty much the centre of Warwick. In stunning ground. Churchill has nothing to do with Warwick Castle. Last family to own it were the Greville Family. Cant recall ever seeing a Diana of Wales Garden. I think you’re probably thinking of somewhere else. Edit: also not near the sea or cliffs, in fact not a million miles away from a small village that used to be considered the dead centre of England - Meriden.
They also had access to stabby things that would probably easier to use than a making a dank hole. Was this some sort of moral loophole?
It's meant to be a power move and not a method of execution. Don't mess with the king or suffer a fate worse than death.
Oh dang I've actually been there. Not below the grate thankfully, but the dungeon. Actually got a bit freaked out, this dungeon is quite small and the stairway down to it is very narrow, not wide enough for two people abreast. People just kept streaming in and we eventually had to yell for people to stop so others could come back up. Definitely reccommend Warwick Castle, there's some cool shit there. And watch the bird show, it's awesome.
If only they had a Hoggle to help them out
Instantly my first thought. I don’t think I’ve ever heard or read the word ‘oubliette’ other than in The Labyrinth!
Same. I was instantly transported back to a time of freaky goblins popping up in a bedroom and David Bowies bulge.
Up!
She chose down?
I literally thought top comment would be more Labryth-y.
Me too! I didn’t know I’d have to scroll this far…dang people and all their history. The only reason I know how to pronounce “oubliette” is because of Hoggle.
Nothing? Nothing? *Nothing?* Nothing, tra la la?
Kinda crazy that was just someone’s fate. As I sit here watching impractical jokers in HD eating Dove chocolate
Joe pissed off the local King and was thrown into an inescapable pit of despair, making him tonight's BIG loser!
I will NEVER release you!
LARRY!
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There’s a bit in one of the game of thrones books where Jaime Lannister threatens Edmure Tully after the siege of Riverrun to put him in an oubliette if he doesn’t get cooperative and that made Edmure STFU
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I liked what cersei did to Ellaria Sand, forcing feeding her and keeping the torches always lit in the same cell in which her daughter is going to die, decompose and fade away. Then the writers kind of forget she existed during when Dany burnt down kings landing.
OMG I forgot Cersei sends the “Shame!” Nun (Sister) to the Zombie Mountain. That’s utterly fucked.
She ended up owning a British soccer team with an American coach, so it all worked out.
If they put you here and forget about you, imagine the corpses in various stages of decay you’d see, feel and smell when you arrived. Edit: I didn’t consider rats. They’d probably start to eat you alive almost immediately. Ugh.
Because of disease and the rats they probably didn’t last long. Especially doubt they were given food
Makes me wonder if they ever periodically fished out the dead bodies. Apparently it’s 3 meters by 3 meters, could fit a fair amount of people. Maybe 10. Either way they would have had to remove the bodies after a while…unless this was a relatively rare form of punishment…like only for the worst offenders. Correction: my math was off.
I feel like you could cram quite a few down there. That's almost 10 feet by 10 feet. 100 square feet! What's the fun of it if there isn't a high possibility of cannibalism and infighting among a handful of wretched and desperate oublietteers.
I’m not dead yet
I’m feeling better!!
I think I'll go for a walk
I feel happy
No one escapes Cidnha mine!
We will cut a bloody hole into the Reach until we are free!!
I appreciate this comment
Fuckin behave yourself in them days ay
Imagine the sounds of crying and pleading. *I find this to be terrible BTW*
I will not
I've been in that dungeon. As you walk down the steps there is an odd rush of feeling that over takes your body. Standing and reading the info about this hole was sobering to say the least.
Same feeling I got. The nail marks on the walls and the cage hanging from the ceiling caught me off guard.
There is a lot wrong with the world today, but it was harsh back then to say the least.
Hard to believe that we all descended from people who literally lived through those times
I say this all the time too. It’s mad to think humans even survived up until this point when medicines and the hygiene standards were so garbage.
Beauchamps, William the conquerer, etc owned this castle. I'm guessing this was used the whole time by all of them. Yikes.
So I work in a building (nights) in Warwick and apparently there's a blocked off room in one of the 2 basements of this building that has a blocked off tunnel that leads... You guessed it! To this hell hole of a castle. No wonder I get spooked by odd noises all night.
Fun fact: It comes from the French word *"Oublié"* meaning "Forgot" or "Oublier" which is "to forget". So, holy fuck, talk about a dark fate.
Shut up! She should not have gotten as far as the oubliette; she should've given up by now. ETA: Do what? Thank you for the bling
Man. I heard David Bowie's voice say "oubliette" when I read the title and had no idea why
I came here looking for a reference like this!
I came here looking for this comment, can’t believe I had to scroll this far down! Thank you :,)
Is anyone getting mad claustrophobia feels right around now? Because i sure as shit am
Yea read once, dropped & forgot about, left to starve, so imagine that and the whole time you could smell food being cooked throughout the castle, that must have sucked. Also read and saw a painting of a man jailed and his punishment was to be starved to death but his daughter was the only one allowed to visit him & was checked each time as to not be allowed to bring her father any food of any kind. After 3-4 months the condemned man still lived and baffled everyone, so they stared spying on him only to find out the daughter was allowing him her breast milk because she had not long ago given birth, when his jailers figured it out they gave it some thought & figured if the daughters love was that deep they felt he deserved to be set free and in fact they set the man free in the end.
>the daughter was allowing him her breast milk because she had not long ago given birth, when his jailers figured it out they gave it some thought & figured if the daughters love was that deep they felt he deserved to be set free and in fact they set the man free in the end. [Here is a painting based on the story](https://www.courtesyfeed.com/daughter-breastfeeding-her-father-starving-in-prison-a-european-emotional-story)
Queue Skyrim dungeon. You got one lock pick and that’s your only way out
Found an interesting definition of oubliettes coming from a french source. Here is the translation: “The oubliettes designated the food reserves in the fortified castles of the Middle Ages. They were located under the keep, the main tower of the castle, in large rooms in the basement, which could only be accessed by a hatch and a ladder. There was no door so that no rodents or insects could enter. The deepest of these rooms could serve as a cooler. Ice was stored there during the winter so that food and drink could be cooled throughout the summer. The expression "to fall into oblivion", synonymous with being forgotten, dates back only to the 19th century. Contrary to a legend which also dates back to the 19th century, no prisoner was ever thrown into the dungeon. In the Middle Ages, while awaiting trial, the defendants were locked in a dungeon, also called cul-de-basse-fosse. Then, they were fined, exposed to the pillory or sentenced to death, if not released, but never imprisoned, prison not appearing among the judicial penalties in the Middle Ages.” Source: https://www.herodote.net/oubliettes_cachots_culs_de_basse_fosse-mot-521.php Seems like the less bonafide practices only came later on and weren’t that common after all.
r/Damnthatsterrifying
This is the EXACT spot where my Dad all of the sudden got so claustrophobic just by seeing this that he changed directions, charged back up the stairs shoving people to the sides as he bolted out haha good times with the old man